Work Text:
“It seems I owe you an apology. I’ve always heard it’s impolite to keep one’s friends waiting.”
Hob felt awkwardly formal. What was the etiquette when you’d had a fight a hundred and thirty years ago?
“I felt sure I’d seen the last of you.”
The Old Stranger (Old…Friend? No, that sounded wrong) inclined his head. “I was unavoidably detained.”
“Ah,” Hob said and gestured to the bartender for another ale. “Business. And what is your business exactly? I’m not sure you’ve said.”
“How have you been keeping this century?” Well, it wasn’t like he truly expected an answer.
“It’s funny, I had a whole plan for what to tell you back in ’89 but everything’s just flown out of my head.”
“You make plans for me?” the Old Stranger asked.
“Learned my lesson back in in the sixteenth century—your attention is a bit fickle. You’re hard to impress.” Hob smiled as the bartender brought over two ales. “Read my mind, Tom.”
“And are you trying to impress me?” The Old Stranger made no move for his. He seldom did. And yet he seemed comfortable, in a way he never had been before.
“No, no. That’s not what friends do, is it? Also, I don’t think you can be impressed.” Hob gathered the papers up, trying not to crumple them too much, and shoved them into his satchel. The Old Stranger nodded his head at them. “Oh, marking tests. I’m a visiting reader—which is pretty remarkable for someone who was illiterate for his first century. Middle English. I figured, why try to learn something new when I can use something old? I think the kids would call it, taking an easy mark.”
“Is there much interest in that?” The Old Stranger leaned back, crossing his legs.
“You’d be surprised! Chaucer is as popular as ever—and now it’s a classic. It’s not just raunchy tales, it’s also literature. Who wouldn’t rather read tavern tales than take a class on Middlemarch or Ulysses?
“I wrote a biography of Chaucer, if you can believe it. ‘Vivid and intimate, as if the author had been a bosom companion of the man himself.’ New York Times. Hit number eight on the non-fiction bestseller list.”
The Old Stranger looked faintly amused, as he often did. “Did you know Chaucer?”
“No—I think I was in the same tavern with him a few times, but no. I knew plenty of men like him, though. I conjured an amalgam—poetic license you could say. Said my sources were all from anonymous private collectors, and the book publishers don’t fact check anything.” Hob took a swig of ale. “Got picked up as a textbook—university classes on Chaucer, medieval history.
“Here’s the genius—I copyrighted it in America! They have this wonderful system there, copyright. Lasts for lifetime of the author, plus seventy years! So I make sure G.G. Roberts—that’s my nom de plume—lives a long, long life in seclusion, handle everything through solicitors, no press appearances, and ‘his son’ will probably still be earning royalties next time I see you!” Hob paused there. The last hadn’t been a question. Exactly. And went as unanswered as his questions always were.
“Tell me of the last hundred years, Hob Gadling. How has humanity been keeping?” The Old Stranger seemed to settle in, waiting for a tale. Hob was happy to oblige. He had seldom had the Stranger’s attention for so long—something always seemed to make their meetings brief. Whether that be the Stranger’s own wandering attention or one very memorable interruption.
Hob talked. For hours—if he had thought things were changing quickly in the fifteenth century, nothing held a candle to the twentieth and the twenty-first. Perhaps most amazing to him was how quickly radical changes became normal, and then boring. The last time he was in the shipping trade, he would have killed to be able to hear news of his ships even a month sooner, and now he could watch a dot on his phone showing the Deliveroo guy turning his bike onto his street. Truly a remarkable time.
He did not talk much about the wars. He was an old soldier, but some things one did not grow used to. And the last century had seen the machinery of death change quickly as well.
Hob realized with a start that they were the last patrons in the tavern. Tom nodded to him and started putting chairs on tables. A few minutes more, then.
“It’s funny,” Hob said. “I used to think that death was something people were too foolish not to go along with.”
“I believe you called it a ‘mug’s game.’”
“Sounds like me.”
“And what do you think now?”
“Now? I don’t think anyone gets a choice. I’ve seen people fight to live. Unbelievable things humanity is capable of doing just for a few more hours, even when it would seem far easier to stop trying.” Hob paused for a long moment. “I don’t know what I did to deserve what so many fight for and never get—and I’m not asking! I’ve learned that lesson, to not question a miracle.”
“Perhaps it is because you did not ask.” The amusement faded from the Old Stranger’s face. “Or demand.”
Hob had tried to remember exactly what he’d said on one night in a tavern like so many other nights, and yet, somehow, the most important night of his life. “You haven’t asked me, you know.” Hob waved his hand. “‘Another hundred years?’”
The Old Stranger held his gaze for a long time. “I will tell you a secret, Robert Gadling. If you like.” He leaned across the table, and Hob felt compelled to lean forward as well, until the Old Stranger was whispering in his ear. “I did not grant you immortality.”
When the Old Stranger pulled back, he was smiling—as much as he ever did. As if he’d given Hob a gift with that statement. Hob jerked back. “What do mean, you didn’t grant me immortality? Do you mean I’m like Methuseleh, I’ll get to 900 something years and then croak?”
“Death says hello.” He was practically laughing, the bastard. “See you in a hundred years.”
“I demand to know what that means!” Hob said, but the Old Stranger was already heading for the door. Hob scrambled out from around the edge of the table, another worry occurring to him. “Do you mean—” but the Old Stranger was too far away, and he knew enough not to yell his question and risk being remembered by the wrong person. “Do you mean 2089 or 2121,” he muttered. The Old Stranger was already out of sight. “Fuck.”
~*~
Hob didn’t sleep well after that. As one might imagine. Not granted immortality? Then what was this? Why ask him if he was ready for death? He thought he’d gotten the answer to that in 1489—interested, my arse, he thought.
The Old Stranger was fucking with him. That had to be it. Was that what it meant to be “friends”? Friends give friends panic attacks about impending death? Next time he saw the Old Stranger, he’d have to give him a lesson on appropriate forms of humor. He didn’t even know what year that would be, which would make it hard to orchestrate his identities. Things were so much harder now with CCTVs. It had been hard enough for him to arrange to be in the vicinity for thirty years after their planned meeting without risking another witch accusation. He would figure it out.
But…what if it wasn’t a joke?
~*~
Hob couldn’t remember their first meeting, was the problem. Why would he? It was just another night in another tavern with drinking companions whose names and faces were long forgotten. The most remarkable thing about the gentleman was that he had been a gentleman. Wearing a ruby large enough and openly enough that Hob had been sure there was muscle somewhere nearby with their hands on their short swords. He had first thought of following him out of the tavern and having a go for that jewel, but there was something about his air that made Hob feel that would have been a very bad idea.
It tortured him, that first hundred years as it became more apparent that he was surviving battles he should not survive. Had he made a deal? What had he said? What had he promised?
After the first meeting, he had the slim reassurance that he had not made deal with a demon. Or a devil. If one could trust the word of such a one to say what they were. Or a saint, either, which had been the end of his theories on the matter. After that the Old Stranger just was, and though Hob still asked from time to time, it was for form’s sake. He’d begun to think there was no answer.
The terms seemed clear after that second meeting. Each time he would be given one hundred years, and then his job was to keep the Old Stranger interested. If he was interested, then he had another hundred years.
By 1889, he wasn’t sure he truly believed he had to show up to continue to live. Not that he wanted to risk it. But he found he came more out of interest himself than fear. And then when the Old Stranger didn’t show in 1989 and Hob kept on keeping on anyway, it seemed like even meeting him every hundred years maybe wasn’t a requirement.
Then this meeting was entirely unexpected and seemed…friendly. More like two friends catching up after an absence than fulfilling the terms of a deal. So what could it possibly mean? The Old Stranger hadn’t granted him immortality.
He’d have to wait, he guessed. A hundred years. To get his answers. Not like it was the first time. It’s not that he was complaining—who would complain about avoiding death a little longer?—but there were certain parts of his existence that were exceedingly frustrating.
~*~
Years passed. He didn’t think about it too much, except when he did. And then he spotted a link to an article from an extremely dubious news source, except that it contained a very memorable name. Johanna Constantine.
It could be entirely a coincidence. But then again… The Old Stranger had said that he’d seen her again, and that she’d “succeeded admirably” in a task for him. (That conversation he remembered in excruciating detail— he’d replayed every single word in his head when he couldn’t sleep at night, as if in replaying it he could make it end differently one of these times.)
Whoever Johanna Constantine was, she didn’t seem to have any presence on the internet. No social media, no images. Of course, there were luddites in any age, but if this truly was a young woman who grew up in the internet age, such a lack of presence was unusual. Very unusual. Or, one might say, someone being very careful. The way Hob was careful.
If she knew the Old Stranger—if she also had lived hundreds of years—well, she’d been a lot more intentional about seeking out immortality than Hob had, hadn’t she. She would know. She would know what the Old Stranger meant. It was a slim chance, but maybe. Part of Hob’s mind told him to leave well enough alone. The other reminded him what it had felt like to be stood up in 1989, and with this hanging over his head, he wasn’t willing to risk the Old Stranger being unavoidably detained again.
Hob did not exactly have connections in the parts of society that kept themselves hidden. He had one miracle, that was enough, and the best way to get on was to avoid trouble. He wouldn’t say he lived a blameless life, but he tried to live one that wouldn’t lead to another stern warning from the Old Stranger. So it became a way to pass the time in his evenings after prepping the next day’s lecture. Tune the telly to Dave for some background noise and dig around the internet looking for any references to Constantine.
He’d find mentions here or there, mostly on reddit threads about the occult (and, well, that would figure, wouldn’t it) but no pictures, nothing that made him sure.
Until one day he found it—on a thread about old punk bands, of all things. One of those hipster conversations about who knew about the most obscure group, the ones that had never had a record contract, ones that only true fans would know about.
There was a group from about fifteen years back, Mucous Membrane. Lead singer, Johanna Constantine. A blurry photo from a club, and that was her. She hadn’t aged a day. “Succeeded admirably, I’ll bet,” Hob muttered.
Of course, that didn’t tell Hob how to get in touch with her. He thought first of going through the other old band members, but searches for the group uncovered that something very bad had happened to cause the group to break up. Details were sparse, but a child had died. Gary Lester, the other founder of the band, had died a few years ago of something else that led to wild speculation on reddit.
Hob swallowed his pride and hired a private detective. It took $500 and two days to have Johanna Constantine’s phone number and home address, which was—frankly—terrifying, and a good reminder that Hob needed to do a much better job on his own identities if he didn’t want men in black showing up at his door someday.
~*~
He rang the buzzer at the address the private detective had given him. This felt like a conversation to have in person, and—sometimes he felt more comfortable with the old ways. Though he didn’t miss calling cards. He rang the buzzer again. No answer. Well, she could be out. He rang the number he’d been given, and very faintly above him he could here strains of “Anarchy in the UK.” She was in then. Well, he never got anywhere without being persistent. He rang the buzzer again.
This time he got a response. “WHAT!” came through the intercom.
He looked at the buttons, picked one that looked like it would talk back, and pressed it. “Hello. I, uh, wanted to talk to you. About a. Mutual friend of ours.”
The response was staticky and cut off, as if she’d started talking before hitting the button. “—ger off. Not taking new clients.”
Then silence. He waited a full five minutes by his watch to see if she was coming back, then rang the buzzer again.
The sound of a very staticky sigh. “If I don’t come down, are you just going to keep ringing that.”
Hob pressed the intercom button. “Thought it more polite than ringing your neighbors and showing up at your door.”
Another five minutes passed, then the door opened just enough for a face to poke out, then wince back from the afternoon light.
There was absolutely no mistaking. He’d only met her once, but this was the same woman. He wasn’t sure what information she had—or what he’d have to do to get her to share—but for the first time in six hundred years he felt like he might get an answer to some of his questions.
She held a hand over her eyes, then asked, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Two in the afternoon?”
At that she squinted, then grabbed his wrist to look at his watch. “Fuck. Okay—I’m here. What do you want, exorcism? Love spell for your ex? Cause I can tell you those go spectacularly well.” As she talked, she shook out a cigarette and started looking for a lighter in the pocket of her ratty bathrobe.
“No. I just want a conversation. About our mutual friend.” He emphasized the last two words.
“Look, buddy, I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’ve had just about enough of this, so why don’t you toddle off. If you ring that buzzer again I’ll come back and break your fingers. Okay?” She started to shut the door.
“I’ll pay you.” He held out the money he had in his wallet, which was—he glanced at it—about five hundred pounds. The world may be going cashless, but Hob knew there was nothing as good as hard currency if you had to leave in a hurry.
She squinted at it, then made a grab. Hob jerked it back. “Not ‘til we talk.”
She glared at him. “Fine. Give me a minute.”
~*~
A few minutes later she emerged again, this time dressed in a tan trench coat and—if not showered—at least she’d brushed her hair.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s go to my office.”
He followed her a few blocks to a hole-in-the-wall chippy. Constantine stepped up to the counter. “Two large cod and medium chips. Salt and vinegar on the chips. Side of mushy peas.” She gestured at Hob. “He’s paying.”
Hob added his order. Constantine had finished another cigarette on the way over and didn’t seem particularly inclined to start their conversation. They grabbed their food and he followed her to a nearby park. When they sat down, she held out her hand. Hob gave her the money.
“Alright. You’ve got until I finish these chips.” She started on them in a way that let Hob know he didn’t have a huge amount of time.
“I wanted to talk to you. About our mutual friend.”
“You keep saying that and I keep telling you I have no idea what you’re talking about. But if that’s the line you want to keep using, by all means.” She wiped her fingers.
“Uh, I thought this would be easier. You know—our friend, from the last time we met.”
“I have never met you before, I promise you that.”
“Yes, you have, you know—” he smiled, trying to remember what he had looked like in 1789. Beard? No—the fashion then had been clean shaven.
Constantine shook her head and ate another chip.
“I suppose you could have forgotten. I would think it would have been memorable, though.”
“I guarantee that you and I have very different ideas of what counts as memorable.”
Hob hadn’t wanted to play his hand so baldly, but the chips were almost gone. “You know—the White Horse Tavern?” He glanced around—no one nearby. He pointed at himself. “The Wandering Jew?”
“That’s it.” Constantine slammed her chips on the bench. “This conversation is over,” she said standing. “Every goddam time… If you pull out a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I will punch you.”
“No, no! That’s what you called me!” Hob said, standing.
“I don’t know what draws you crazies. You think just because I’ve talked to demons I’ll believe your George Soros bullshit.” She was leaving.
“No—you’ve got it all wrong!” He grabbed her arm, and could tell he had seconds before she made good on that promise to punch him. “At the White Horse Tavern. In 1789.”
She paused. “We met in 1789.”
“Yes, exactly,” he said, releasing her arm. “With our mutual friend.”
“So you’re, what. Like Mad Hetty?” Constantine asked.
“If I say yes, will you sit back down?” Constantine sat. “Thank you. I wanted to talk to you because I felt sure if anyone could understand my situation it would be someone in a similar situation.”
“That situation being…having been alive in 1789.”
“Yes, exactly.” Hob breathed a sigh of relief. “Of course, you were Lady Johanna Constantine then, but I was a lord once, I understand that the wheel of fortune turns on us all, so you won’t hear a word more about it from me.”
“Lady Johanna Constantine was my ancestor.”
Hob nodded. “Ah, yes. Of course. With the exact same name.”
“It’s a family name.”
“I understand.” He’d learned discretion very well after the seventeenth century. He’d had to. “Well—I. I wanted to ask you about the task you undertook. For our mutual friend. He said you performed it admirably. And well, I may have made some small inferences, but here we both still are, after all.”
“And so you’re looking for our mutual friend. Who I performed a task for. Two hundred years ago.”
Finally. “Yes, exactly.”
“I really am not Lady Johanna Constantine—stop tapping the side of your nose, you arse—but I think I might know what you’re talking about. There are some stories about my ancestor that I’d thought were fairy tales. Things happened a few years ago, though, that made me change my mind about that.” She leaned forward. “Our mutual friend—Dream of the Endless?”
Hob couldn’t parse that—was that a question? “I’m sorry, could you repeat that.”
“You’re looking for Dream?”
“No, I’m not looking for a dream?” He paused, confused. Constantine looked just as confused. “I’m looking for a friend. This might come off a bit wrong, but I’m not sure of his name. I’m not sure he even has a name. Not one he’s ever told me, anyway.”
“Your friend, whose name you don’t know? Alright—tall, pale, crazy hair, always in black, unnaturally skinny?”
“Yes! Yes, that’s him.”
“That’s Dream.”
“Dream…” he said, thinking of what she’d said a few moments ago. “Of the Endless?” He couldn’t believe it. A name, after more than 600 years. But a name that meant…what?
“Dream. Morpheus. Oneiros. The Sandman. King of Dreams. King of Nightmares. Lord Shaper. That’s who you met in a tavern in 1789. With my ancestor, I suppose. He did say he’d known my family for centuries.” Constantine gathered her wrappers and chucked them in a trash can. “So that’s you sorted, then. Thanks for the chips.”
Hob gathered his trash as well and scrambled to keep up. “What do you mean, sorted? That’s not what I came to ask about.”
“Isn’t it? Well, now you know how to find him, you could ask him yourself.”
Hob had definitely missed something. “That doesn’t answer where to find him.”
Constantine looked at him puzzled. “Your friend is the Lord of Dreams. So—dream. Go to sleep. I’d tell you to say hi for me, but it’s never a good idea to be brought to the attention of beings like that. If I were you, I’d leave it alone. But suit yourself.”
With that she waved and walked away.
~*~
Just…go to sleep. That seemed simple enough. Except he’d slept thousands of times since he’d met the Old Stranger—hundreds of thousands of times. If he’d been entering the Old Stranger’s kingdom every time, why bother to meet him in a tavern every hundred years?
It simply made no sense. The Old Stranger being a devil or a demon or a saint he at least could understand. Or if the Old Stranger were some sort of immortal himself. He hadn’t actually said that he wasn’t the Wandering Jew. If he was some other immortal wandering the earth, maybe he’d shared his gift to have another person to share the journey. That made sense.
The King of Dreams, though? Why would a god whose domain was sleep make Hob immortal and meet him in a pub every hundred years? Why would he make Lady Johanna Constantine immortal as well? (It didn’t matter how much she denied it—Hob was certain that was the same woman.) And then why tell Hob that he hadn’t?
The Wikipedia page on Morpheus was shockingly brief (though made mention of Morpheus having wings, and wouldn’t that be a sight). Oneiros proved equally unhelpful—though it seemed to be a figure that sometimes sent prophetic dreams. There was nothing about the Endless.
He stopped by a Waterstones and bought Bulfinch’s Mythology and ordered a translation of E.T.A Hoffman’s “Der Sandmann.” Though when that arrived he put aside very quickly—if the Old Stranger ate children’s eyeballs, that was something he didn’t want to know.
And every night, he tried to hold an image of the Old Stranger in his mind as he fell asleep. And every morning he woke up with the vague, vanishing sense that he’d had pleasant dreams, though he could not remember what of. He’d never remembered his dreams very well, but it had never seemed a problem before.
This wasn’t working. He had to go back to Constantine. Clearly she knew more about this than she had shared. What he truly wanted was an answer to his question—she must be able to help with that.
~*~
“Oh, it’s you again.” The second visit to Constantine’s flat had definitely gone better. Though he still had the impression he’d woken her up, even though it was late afternoon.
She emerged from the door ten minutes later with wet hair, tying her trench coat around her waist. “My office?”
They settled in the park again, once they’d gotten their order, despite a light drizzle. “Lord Morpheus not accepting visitors?”
“I never remember my dreams,” Hob said.
“Lucky you.”
“I’m serious. I can’t remember the last time I woke up remembering what I dreamt, other than some vague…feeling that I couldn’t put into words if I tried.”
“Common enough.”
“Right, but that’s not even why I came to talk to you in the first place. I wasn’t looking to find the Old Stranger—Dream, I mean—more that I had a question about him. That you, with your unique experience, could help me answer.”
“Alright. Any chance of getting five hundred quid again?”
Hob stopped himself from patting his wallet, an old tell for pickpockets. “That must have bought me more than one conversation.”
Constantine tilted her head. “You’re pushing your luck. But lucky for you, you’re slightly more interesting than what I had planned for this afternoon, and you bought me lunch. So if you weren’t looking to find our mutual friend--whose name you didn’t even know—then what did you come for?”
Hob paused. He was at an impasse on his own, that was certainly true. But it was his first encounter with this woman that had taught him caution. As the Old Stranger said, he could still be hurt. Or captured. The safest thing to do would be to walk away, keep the rest of his secrets.
But that one sentence—I did not grant you immortality—was like a splinter. It had been five years and he hadn’t managed to extract it. He took a deep breath. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If this went sideways, he always had his escape routes planned. It had been a century since he’d spent time in Australia, after all.
“I first met the stranger in 1389. I was drunk, boasting about something or other. I don’t remember much about the encounter, but he said he’d see me in a hundred years, in that same tavern. I would have forgotten completely, except it began to be obvious I wasn’t aging. And then I didn’t die—and several times I certainly should have. I was what you’d charitably call a mercenary then. They don’t tend to live long lives. So a hundred years later, I met him there. And I’ve been meeting him every hundred years ever since.”
Constantine had stopped eating as he talked. She lit a cigarette, shielding the ember from the drizzle. “You’re 640 years old.”
“Closer to 670, but records weren’t really kept back then and the calendar’s changed a few times, so I can’t be sure.”
“Prove it.”
Hob spread his hands. “Not really something I can prove. I’m not about to stab myself in the heart in the middle of a park to show you what happens. I’ve had one miracle in my life and I don’t question it. Even I remember, ‘don’t put the Lord your God to the test.’ Though in this case, I guess it’s don’t put Lord Morpheus to the test. I did some reading since I last saw you, and the Greek gods seem even worse to piss off than the Christian one.”
Constantine tapped ash off the end of her cigarette. “Dream’s not a god. The Greeks mistook him for one, but he’s something entirely different.”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you about. I don’t remember whatever I said to him that brought me my miracle. But—you must. You sought it out intentionally. So what were the terms of your deal?”
“My deal?” Constantine said. “I helped him find an item he misplaced and he got rid of a nightmare for me. I wouldn’t call that much of a deal, though.”
“No, no—your deal. The reason you’re still here. Two hundred years later.”
Constantine sighed. “We’re on this again? I don’t know how many times I need to tell you, that was my ancestor. It’s a family name. Not only can I not tell you what she talked to Dream about, I feel fairly certain it was nothing like your situation, since she’s been dead for centuries.”
Hob squinted at her. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe.
“Why the urgency now, though? You’ve been meeting him every hundred years and enjoying your not dying and have somehow made it all this time without having any idea who and what he is. If you don’t question it, it seems an awful lot like you’re questioning it now.”
The rain had started running rivulets below his collar. He ran his fingers through his hair to try to shake some of the water off. “It’s because of something he said the last time we met. Well—first, we’ve been meeting every hundred years, yeah? Always in ’89. But this past time he didn’t show, which was totally my fault, I understand that. Doesn’t matter. But then he shows up out of the blue in 2022, seems a lot chummier. And when he was leaving, he said, ‘I didn’t grant you immortality.’ Just like that! No clarification, just ‘I didn’t grant you immortality,’ then ‘Death says hello,’ and then he fucked off! So these past five years, I can’t get past thinking that I’m not immortal, that there’s a timer on this and I don’t know when it will go off. I don’t know how everyone else does it, it’s unbearable.”
Hob stopped. Constantine was laughing. Well and properly laughing. “What?”
“First—first—let me play my tiniest violin that you’re worried about dying after your six hundred years of life.” She paused laughing long enough to take a drag on her cigarette, before flicking the butt onto the wet pavement. “I doubt I’ll make it to forty, honestly, and not because of those,” she gestured at the cigarettes.
“And second—of course he didn’t grant you immortality. He’s Dream! Haven’t you been listening? His domain is dreams, nightmares, visions, ideas, inspiration—not life and death. That isn’t his domain. He even bloody told you.” She started laughing again.
“I’m not following.”
“He’s not the only Endless. There are six of them—well, seven, depending on what records you’re looking at. ‘Death says hello.’ His sister, Death. If anyone granted you immortality, it’s her.” She shook her head. “I tell you what, this has made getting out of bed today entirely worth it. I knew he couldn’t be dark and brooding all the time. No, he takes time out to meet with a human every hundred years and then completely freak him out, explain nothing, and fuck off. Lord, who knew the Endless had a sense of humor.”
“Back up, back up. His sister, Death?”
“Yeah—older sister. Hard to find information about her. Those who meet her don’t often live to write a record of it. Sometimes you’ll find an account from a spiritualist though, one who actually made contact with the other side, not one of the charlatans cracking their knuckles under the table. Then you can find reference to her. Sounds like a lovely lady.” She shook out another cigarette, seemingly not bothered by the rain.
“So. Death. Granted me immortality. Then why have I never met her? Why meet Dream every hundred years?”
“That I couldn’t tell you. You’ve got one thing right about the Endless—they might not be gods, but they are just as petty and capricious as the Greek pantheon. Who knows why they do anything? And, I’m thinking, if you’d met Death you wouldn’t be in your situation at all. At least you know she’s thinking of you and sends her best wishes?” Constantine broke out into laughter again.
She started gathering the trash, like that was the end of the conversation. And he supposed it was, or at least one conversation. Now he knew what the Old Stranger meant—not I didn’t grant you immortality, but I didn’t grant you immortality. He’d have to thank him the next time he saw him for intentionally phrasing that in the most alarming way possible.
But—that left so many other questions. Everything made so much less sense now. Obviously, Constantine couldn’t help answer any of the whys and wherefores, and he’d never been successful at getting answers out of the Old Stranger himself. But none of that mattered if he couldn’t talk to him. And—maybe Constantine could still help with that.
“I feel like I’m back at the beginning,” Hob said. “I need to talk to him—you said to sleep, but I tried that, it doesn’t work. Can’t remember my dreams.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not talking to him,” Constantine said with a raised eyebrow. “You could be talking to him every night and not know it. Or not talking to him.”
“That is very not reassuring.” Hob stood as well. “You must have some idea how to remember—some spell or ritual or something?”
“Nope—no. You’ve avoided that for hundreds of years, I’m not going to be the reason you get pulled in. Trust me, nothing good ever comes of messing with these things.”
“You do it.”
She shrugged. “Too late for me.” She started walking out of the park. “Tell you what, though. Sometimes it’s easier to remember dreams if you wake up in the middle of them. You could try something Salvador Dali used to do. He was very into dreams—you must have seen that in his paintings. He had a specific way to capture them. He would sit in a comfortable chair, and hold a spoon loosely between his fingers. Underneath him, he’d have a plate or a metal pan or something. When he truly started to fall asleep, his fingers would relax and he’d drop the spoon—bang! Wake him up. Then he’d paint melting clock faces or whatever.”
“That is truly mental,” Hob said, following her.
“Salvador Dali,” Constantine said. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but let me know how it goes. You’ve piqued my curiosity, Robert Gadling, and that’s a rare thing.”
~*~
“You are a fool,” Hob muttered to himself. “A damn fool. What the hell am I doing.” It was evening, around the time he normally retired, and instead of brushing his teeth and doing some reading before turning out the light, he was looking under his sink for the stew pot he swore was there.
He found it eventually, and grabbed a serving spoon from the kitchen. He eyed his winged chair for a moment, then decided it was too comfortable for the purpose, and wheeled his desk chair into the middle of the living room floor. He sat, placing the pot between his legs. He rested his elbows on his knees, and gently held the spoon between his fingers.
“Well, at least thank god there’s no one here to watch this.” He took a couple deep breaths and tried to relax.
It wasn’t that he was worried he couldn’t fall asleep like this. He’d slept in muddy ditches when marching with Buckingham. He wasn’t sure an academic’s life was quite as good at making one pass out whenever the opportunity presented itself as a hard march as a foot soldier had been, but.
He resisted the urge to open his eyes. He felt like he’d been sitting for an hour at least. If he spent the whole night awake, that would serve him right. Six hundred years, the Old Stranger always came to him—it seemed to be violating the spirit of the deal to go knocking on the Stranger’s door. Even now that he knew it wasn’t a deal with the Stranger at all.
He tried to focus on the Old Stranger, calling him to mind as he had last seen him. Things slipped sideways. It seemed that he wasn’t looking at a memory in his mind’s eye, but into the Old Stranger’s eyes—only, it wasn’t his eyes at all, but a great, black cat—
BANG.
Hob jerked awake, startled by the clatter of the spoon into the pot. “Bollocks.” He tried to fix in his mind where he had just been. Some of it stuck—a cat, a feeling of another place, almost like a mood, but the details slipped away.
He tried again. And again.
~*~
Every night for a week, and the most he’d gotten were a few images and a feeling of comfort. Which was ironic, given how ragged he was from lack of sleep.
He called Constantine. “You owe me so much coffee. This is a violation of the Geneva convention.”
Constantine met him at a coffee shop for once, and laughed when she made Hob pay for both of them anyway. The barista drew a heart in the foam of his cappuccino—maybe she did that for everyone, but he smiled at her anyway and she winked back. He’d have to come round some time when the café was less busy. And when he’d gotten rid of the bruises under his eyes.
“Not going well, I take it?” Constantine asked when they’d settled at a corner table.
“I have slept in half hour snatches for the last week. I’m pretty sure this is a form of torture. If I could die I might be dead by now.”
“I just gave you a suggestion—I wasn’t saying you should give up sleep entirely.” She sipped her black coffee.
“Well,” Hob said. “Call me motivated.”
“You didn’t remember the dreams, then?”
Hob shrugged. “I did. Some. But they were always so brief—just the beginning then I’d drop the spoon and be awake again. And—it’s all very hard to put into words. More like knowing and being without seeing or hearing, if you know what I mean?”
“’There is, however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul (alas, how rarely!) only at its epochs of most intense tranquility—when the bodily and mental health are in perfection—and at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams.’”
“What is that—Poe?” Hob asked.
Constantine shrugged. “Alan Parsons Project.”
“It’s not like I can walk around there, when I do this. Have a conversation.”
“Well, no. You’re entering his kingdom. The rules are bound to be different than when he enters ours.”
“Our kingdom?”
“Whatever you want to call it—plane, reality. The mortal world. This is the place of our rules, our order. Any time we travel to someplace else, the rules change.”
Hob stared into his coffee a long time. The foam had long dissolved. “Where does that leave me, then? I know where he is, but that doesn’t mean I can see him there. Or—if I do—that I could remember it. So I just wait another hundred years? Hope he’s not in a foul mood? I think I can call him my friend, but even if he is, he’s one of the most temperamental friends I’ve ever had.”
Constantine wrinkled her nose. “I have a policy of not being friends with anything that isn’t human.”
“Did I tell you what he said to me about why all of this?” He waved his hand. “He said he was interested. That’s all. Just interested.”
“Interested in what? In you?” Constantine laughed.
Hob shrugged. “I can’t explain it any better than that. He wants to hear about my life, every hundred years. Doesn’t talk about himself. And even so, sometimes he wanders off mid-sentence. Last time, he stood me up. But then, I’d almost expected it, after he stormed off back in 1889. I imagine the Endless are known to hold grudges.”
“Right, but, he didn’t stand you up in 1989.” Constantine said.
“Well, what else do you call it when you spend a whole day sitting at a bar spending a month’s paycheck on aged whisky?”
“But, I mean, it’s not like he could have come in 1989. You know, because he was—”
Hob was leaning forward without even realizing he’d moved. “He told me he was unavoidably detained.”
Constantine snorted. “That’s one way of putting it. He was locked up in some half-rate magician’s basement.” She stopped smiling. “You didn’t know that?”
“No.” Hob said, very serious. “I did not.”
~*~
“His name was Roderick Burgess—people called him the Demon King. Oh—just put that anywhere.”
To Hob’s surprise, Constantine had led him back to her flat—said she had a few things to show him. It would have been a fairly nice flat, if every surface wasn’t covered with papers and objects that seemed to suck the light out of the room. As Constantine had talked, Hob had picked up a stack of yellowing newspaper on the couch, looking for a place to sit down. He placed them on another stack on the coffee table, hoping they wouldn’t topple over. It didn’t look like she had any system of organization, but you never knew.
“Just stay here, I think it’s…” Constantine trailed off as she headed into another room. He could hear the sounds of her shuffling objects around, opening and closing drawers. He noticed above his head what he’d taken for a gabled roof was actually shuttered windows. He adjusted the shutters to let in the afternoon sun, which transformed the small living room from ominous to college common room.
“Here we go,” Constantine said, handing Hob what looked like an aging scrapbook. He flipped it open, finding it was the bound copies of a publication called the Notes from the Ambrose Society.
“The Ambrose Society were sort of a historical society during the Spiritualist craze. Liked to keep track of the goings on from various occultists. Of course, it’s mostly bollocks, but from time to time they got something right.” She rifled through the pages, landing on a profile of an austere looking man. “Roderick Burgess.”
Hob read the photo caption. “Roderick Burgess, Lord Magus of the Order of Ancient Mysteries, outside his Sussex Manor, Fawney Rig, 1928.” The article went on to outline the rise in prominence of the Order of Ancient Mysteries in the years after the end of the Great War. The increase in their numbers, the lavish parties, the rumors that the manor held riches both worldly and other. Most of the article was a description of one of the manor’s nightly parties, going into great detail over the people attending and what everyone wore, ate, and drank.
“He died not that long after that.” Constantine was pulling a laptop from under an ashtray and several dirty plates on the table. “The rumor was he had a devil in his basement.” She paused to look at Hob. “It was Dream. He as much as said so. He came to me because I had come into possession of an object that Burgess took from him.”
“How is that even possible?” Hob asked. “I’m still very unclear on what powers the Endless have, but aren’t they basically gods? How does one end up locked in a basement?”
“Not gods,” Constantine said, opening up her laptop. “Older than gods. As to how one gets trapped? He did not tell me that. I imagine he wouldn’t want it advertised. But I can tell you that there are ways to trap even the most powerful beings. There’s always a price, though. And it’s not always the guilty that pay it.”
She silently typed on her laptop for a few minutes, then swiveled it to show Hob. “I didn’t look into it at the time, but with everyone and their mother wanting to be a ghost hunter nowadays, it’s remarkably easy to find footage of practically any supernatural phenomenon you can imagine.”
Constantine clicked on a video titled, “Fawney Rigg—Massacre of the English Devil??”
The video showed a young man speaking into what was probably a handheld phone in front of an iron gate. Not much was visible beyond it—a drive, some hedges, what looked like the corner of a gate house. The man was American, with shoulder length hair and a backwards baseball cap. “In 2020, in this sleepy English town, a massacre happened in one of the quiet homes of the English nobility. But, before we get into that story, if you’re a fan of the occult and unsolved, please like, share, and subscribe, and stick around for an exclusive offer from today’s sponsor, EstVPN.
“Along this path behind me lies the country estate of Fawney Rigg. In the 1920s, it was known for its glitzy parties and free-flowing alcohol—a British F. Scott Fitzgerald fantasy. But behind all of the glamor, could there have been something darker, something more dangerous? Because underneath this quiet mansion, local legend has it that Burgess kept the devil.
“Wealth, sex, power, Burgess had all of that. He called himself Lord Magus of the Order of Ancient Mysteries. In the twenties, the house was full of his followers, wearing robes, chanting, doing anything he asked like a Gilded Age Jim Jones. But that didn’t keep him from dying under mysterious circumstances in 1930. The family buried him on the grounds without even bringing in a coroner. There was no inquiry from the local magistrate—maybe because the British nobility are above reproach, or maybe because the townspeople knew not to interfere when it came to Fawney Rigg.
“But the story doesn’t end there. Burgess had a son, Alex Burgess. He lived his life as a recluse, rarely leaving the grounds. Servants came and went from Fawney Rigg, but all of them have remained tight lipped. Maybe out of loyalty, maybe out of a deeper fear. Rumors started nevertheless. Rumors that Alex, who was born in 1906 wasn’t aging. The house remained its own society, but perhaps the town expected, as the decades passed, for word of the death of its master to come, but none did. The old timers in the town said that when they saw Alex, he didn’t seem any older than he had been decades before. And not just Alex—also his personal secretary, Paul McGuire. Personal secretary, or something more? Could it be that Alex was continuing his father’s tradition and had bargained with the devil to extend his life and the life of his lover?”
Hob shivered. This was sounding—uncomfortably familiar. He hoped there wasn’t a fame-hungry youtuber out there assembling a history of Hob Gadling and speculating that he never seemed to change.
“But as we all know, if you bargain with the devil, the devil takes his due. And on the night of December 2, 2020, the peaceful countryside was shattered by sirens and the secrets of Fawney Rigg took their payment.”
The video cut to hand-held as the man walked down the darkened path, presumably on the other side of the gate. “This is like Blair Witch Project,” Constantine sighed. “I swear, I could do without every amateur film maker deciding that shaky cam was an artistic choice.”
“Tonight I’m going to take you where no other youtuber has gone—into Fawney Rigg,” the video continued. “A note to my fans—I have years of experience at supernatural visitations. Do not attempt to do this yourself.”
Constantine laughed. “Right, of course, because this arse is a professional.”
The camera cut again to the inside of the manor. It spent twenty minutes looking around at furniture under sheets and ornaments on the walls—Constantine scrubbed the video forward until it found a door and stairs downward.
“Okay,” the guy was saying as he fumbled on a flashlight. “It’s time to find out what Roderick Burgess had in his basement.” The video was almost impossible to follow as it went down the stairs, the only soundtrack being the loud breathing of the youtuber.
“He probably added the breathing in post,” Constantine grumbled.
Then it reached the bottom of the stairs. The first thing to see was a giant grate, like some sort of medieval prison. Fortunately for the video, the gate was open. He pushed through, then down a few more stairs, then swung the camera to the center of the room.
Hob gasped as the flashlight slowly arced across a giant—thing in the middle of the room. It looked industrial, like he was looking at the machinery of a foundry. The camera slowly approached, sweeping down to show glass and sand on the floor, then sweeping back up to show the object more clearly. It looked like an orb—the metal struts suspended by chains from the vaults in the ceiling.
“That’s cold iron,” Constantine said, leaning closer. “Supposed to be useful against the Fae. I don’t think that would be enough against an Endless…”
The video was saying something about two deaths in this very room as the camera got closer to the sphere. It stopped for a moment and panned to the ground.
“There!” Constantine paused the video. “A binding circle.” She stared at it for a moment. “Not a type I’m familiar with, but then I haven’t had use to bind things other than demons. You’d have to have some kind of balls to think you could bind a god, or an Endless.” She leaned back. “The glass—if they encased him in glass, made sure there was no way he could interfere with the circle, I suppose that might have been enough.” She clicked away from the video. “Well, I guess it had to have been, if it kept him for more than a century.”
“More than a century!” Hob said, standing. “In that?” His mind was racing. You can be hurt—or captured. Hob had thought that only applied to himself. It had never crossed his mind that the Old Stranger could be captured. And what had Hob been doing for that century? Invested and lost in several technology ventures, traveled to America, settled down for a while, wrote a book—nothing! Nothing of import. “I could have done something. I should have done something.”
“And what would you have done? It’s not like Alex Burgess would have just let you walk in and free his prisoner. I know how people like that think—once you’ve caught a devil you can’t ever let it out. He would have had defenses, both physical and supernatural.”
“Oh,” Hob said, smiling wryly at Constantine, “I’ve spent several lifetimes being very disreputable. I would have figured something out. And they can’t kill me, remember?”
“No,” Constantine said. “But if they caught an Endless, imagine what they would have done with a man that wouldn’t die?”
~*~
Tired as he was, sleep was not coming after those revelations. Maybe he would have been captured as well, but that would have been better than—than obliviously living his life. Even though that’s the only thing the Old Stranger had asked him to do.
Lying in bed, he started scrolling through Reddit on his phone, searching for Fawney Rigg. A few mentions in a thread on historical houses. Some hits on a language thread about Victorian underworld slang. He went back to the youtuber whose video they’d watched and poked around his channel—he’d hit a couple of other English haunted houses in the same period, clearly on a trip from the US for the purpose, but nothing else on Fawney Rigg. He scrolled through the comments on the video and—nope. Never read the comments.
Eventually he got up and opened his laptop. If there wasn’t anything on Reddit, maybe something on a site more dedicated to the supernatural. He stumbled through some fan sites for the show, found a bunch of sites dedicated to conspiracies on UFOs, then ended up scrolling through creepypasta as the sun came up.
He eventually switched back to r/creepypasta on reddit. Deep into a thread on Slenderman, he found a post titled “Slender Man captured.” The post was deleted, though. All he could see were the comments. “This is not Slenderman!” “Moderator, please delete.” “OP—please see community rules, link here.”
This was the most promising thing he’d found in hours. He opened up the Wayback Machine and started clicking through the archives of this site and—there it was.
The original post was a collection of images. A sketch of the orb he’d seen. A blurry black and white photo—most of the frame was taken up by a table leg, but beyond it he could see the orb, and an indistinct blob at the bottom of it. The next photos looked like Polaroids. These were also crooked and poorly focused, like the photographer was trying to take the photos clandestinely. In this he could see the figure more easily, sitting in the bottom of the orb. Naked. Some later photographs, discolored—the same orb, the same naked figure, sitting. A handful with the digital date burned into the corner—5 June 1992. The same figure.
God, had he not moved? Had he sat, naked, in that one position for a hundred years?
He shut the browser window, erased his internet history. Part of him was tempted to save the files, but to what end? What would be the purpose of keeping images of the torture of his friend?
What had changed, then, in 2020 that let him escape? Constantine had said that if you had captured such a being, you could never let it out. That first video, it had talked about a massacre. He opened a new window and pulled it up, fast forwarding to the end.
The youtuber had oversold it with the title—unsurprising. Two people were found dead at the manor that night, no cause ever determined. Alex Burgess, amazingly, at 118, was still alive. Still alive and in a mental institution. It seems like he’d gone from perfect, unnatural health, to a mysterious coma. A coma in which he thrashed and screamed without ceasing. Even Paul McGuire was still alive, seemingly the only one to keep his unnaturally long life peacefully.
Hob couldn’t be sure, but if the Old Stranger was the king of dreams, he had a feeling he’d had his revenge.
~*~
He found himself, that night, just wanting to talk to the Old Stranger. Not to find out what he’d meant about Hob’s life, but maybe to let him know that Hob knew now. And he would have come to his rescue if he could. Or at least tried.
He wasn’t sure what to do next. Constantine had said that the Kingdom of Dreams would have different rules, but he had no way to learn what those rules were. Perhaps he’d visited the Old Stranger a thousand times and never remembered it. Maybe there was nothing Hob could do to visit him—if he was the king, there were usually protocols around such things. One didn’t just show up and talk to royalty.
He’d had so little sleep the past week, he had no doubt he’d drop off as soon as he lay down. He’d made himself stay active all day, fighting the urge for a nap. He drifted through his lectures that day, running on autopilot. Easy enough when he could just start speaking Middle English and call it a translation exercise.
He was sure he wouldn’t dream. Another hundred years, he thought, and then his thoughts broke apart and drifted away.
~*~
He was on a shore. He had no memory of how he had gotten there, but this felt different. Like he had a purpose. He walked along the shore for a while, noticing that he left no footprints behind him. He eventually came upon a creature—a rat in a trench coat and fedora, with a press badge tucked in the brim. This seemed entirely normal.
“Excuse me,” Hob said. “Where am I?”
“That’s a question with many answers,” the rat replied. “I could say you are in the Dreaming, but that’s not very specific. I could say you’re in one of the skerries, the outer shoals of the Dreaming. Or I could say that you are in the Cuckoo’s kingdom—and for that I urge you to be on your way. You would not want her to find you.”
“I am looking for Lord Morpheus. Where might I find him?” Hob asked.
The rat made a quick gesture with his hand at the name. “He hasn’t graced us for a long time. A long time. But I imagine—he would be at the palace, the heart of the Dreaming. And that is a long journey from here and I do not know the way.”
“Thank you,” Hob said. It was then that he noticed a small sailing vessel beached on the shore not far from them. He had spent some time as a sailor—after learning what his investments had done in far away lands, he’d decided for a time that he had to learn the truth himself, and had spent a lifetime at sea, watching the end of the age of sail and the rise of steam.
He approached the boat, and the gunwale was warm in the sun under his hand. He would find his way.
“My pardon—” the rat said, running after them. “Only—if you could find our princess? This land needs her, and we cannot leave to find her.”
Hob turned. “I will tell her if I see her,” Hob said, the promise already feeling ephemeral and dissipating.
He pushed the boat into the waves, wading after it, and jumped in when it began to float. The feel of the lines and the rudder were a homecoming of sorts. He took his direction from the stars—nothing above him looked familiar, but he somehow knew how to set his course.
He sailed for a long time, never getting hungry or thirsty or tired. It was just as well; he hadn’t packed any provisions. He hadn’t planned anything really, but that was a thought that skittered away if he focused on it too long, so he instead focused on the tautness of the sail and the shush of the water against the hull.
After an unmeasurable distance, he reached another shore. He dragged the boat up onto the beach, and began walking to the wall he saw in the distance, bridging the gap between two mountains. As he approached, he saw that the wall was much farther, and much taller, than he had first thought, and there was an enormous gate in the center.
When he reached the gate, he could see it was carved with patterns too immense to make out from the ground. He stopped, unsure what to do next—there was no watch tower or guard. He could…knock?
As he contemplated what to do, one side of the gate opened a crack and he felt the presence of wings rushing past him and out toward the beach. He could not see what it was, but it felt immense. As the wind died down, the door remained open—so he walked through.
And now, in the distance, he could see his goal. That could be nothing but the palace. He walked on.
He descended into a valley surrounded by peaks taller than the Alps, and through a town full of marvels—winged horses, a walking scarecrow with a pumpkin head, a man fully engulfed in flame, yet continuing to purchase apples, nonetheless. There were other people as well—some naked, some in pajamas, some fully dressed, and none of them paying him any mind.
From the town, he emerged onto a bridge over a river, a bridge that seemed to rise and fall like it was breathing. At the end of the bridge, Hob reached a gate, guarded by three enormous creatures. He somehow knew what they were—a gryphon, a wyvern, and a hippogriff. The griffin spoke. “State your business.”
“Uh…I’m here to see Dream. The King of Dreams. His lordship?” Hob stammered.
“And who do you represent?” the wyvern this time.
“No one? Just me.”
The hippogriff. “And who are you?”
“Hob Gadling. Of…earth.”
“A man,” the gryphon said. “What business have you with our master?” from the wyvern.
“I wanted to say hi? This is all…very formal. Which I guess is to be expected. You’ll have to excuse me, it’s been four hundred years since I spoke to royalty, I’m a little rusty on the customs. Though, I suppose that’s not strictly true, is it?” Hob stumbled to a stop.
The three gatekeepers lifted their heads together, as if hearing a distant voice.
“Our master bids you enter,” said the wyvern.
“Follow the light. It will safely guide your way,” from the hippogriff.
“Do not stray from the path,” said the griffon.
The door opened into darkness, lit by a single, floating candle flame. “Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Hob said quietly to himself as he stepped forward. Soon, though, his tongue stilled. There was a feeling about this place, almost like a church, when he had still believed in the supernatural of that sort. A feeling of a great, formless power surrounding him.
There were flickers in the edges of his vision, like marsh lights, trying to draw his attention. He kept his eyes on the candle flame and the corridor he could see in front of him. The corridor that looked normal and solid in his vision, though he had a feeling if he took his eyes of the flame the solidity of the walls would evaporate. So he did not let his gaze stray. He had not lived so long to be a fool.
After an indefinite period, he entered a great hall and the candle flame vanished. The arched ceiling was the night sky and in front of him were three stained glass windows. It seemed to him they did not move, yet he could not get his eyes to still on them long enough to reveal their images.
And in the center was a dais, and on it a silhouette of a man, with eyes that burned like stars. For once, Hob held his tongue. Those manners he did remember from his time in court—one did not speak first to a king.
As he watched, the figure rose and strode down the stairs, and as he approached, he seemed to draw into himself, though Hob couldn’t exactly say that anything had changed. But when he reached the floor, it was the Old Stranger. “Welcome to the heart of the Dreaming, Hob Gadling.”
Hob’s nerves suddenly vanished. “You know, when I first saw you, I had you figured for some nobility, with that great ruby you wore. I guess I was right after all. Though I hadn’t figured you for a king. Or…a god?”
Dream continued to approach. “Not a god. An idea. Though I have been called many things.”
“I met a friend of yours—Johanna Constantine. She filled me in on a few things. Like your name.”
“Is that why you have come?”
“No,” Hob said. In this room he felt more himself than he had on the journey, which was already becoming formless and forgotten. “At first it was because of your parting shot—you bastard. Total existential crisis. Is that what being friends with you means?”
The Old Stranger laughed softly. “Just revealing one part of the truth. It is not in our nature to share all our secrets.”
“So, Death says hello?”
“I did not invent that part. She did bid me say hello.”
Hob paused, unsettled. “Have I met her?”
“Not exactly. Though she has seen you, you have not been introduced.”
Hob paused in thought. “That night at the tavern. She was there?” Oh, he wished he could remember it more clearly. If his eye was caught by this nobleman’s jewel, there must have been another there just as out of place, though there was no shaking loose an image so many years later.
“It was her idea.”
“It—me?”
The Old Stranger nodded.
They were talking about it for the first time, and it seemed like he might get an answer if he asked the only question that had ever mattered to him—why. The potential of that question hung in the air between them, just requiring voice. But he’d had the answer for hundreds of years, hadn’t he? The Old Stranger was interested. Whether in him or in humanity, it didn’t really matter anymore. Hob didn’t question his miracle, even when it seemed like he would get an answer.
Hob shook his head. “As I said, that is not why I came.”
“No?”
“I tried for a long time to enter to ask you that question. It never worked. No, I didn’t come for me.”
The Old Stranger circled him. “If not to reassure yourself of your immortality, then why seek an audience?”
“Constantine told me. Why you did not come in 1989.” The Old Stranger turned away. “I—I am very sorry. Had I known—”
“You did not.”
“Wouldn’t have occurred to me, honestly. You’re the one constant in my life. Even with your warning. It never crossed my mind that you would need help.” The Old Stranger still had not looked at him.
“And if you had known, you would have come?”
“Of course,” Hob said with a laugh.
“Burgess captured an Endless. You think you would have prevailed?”
“I would not have let you rot to save my own skin, if that’s what you’re asking. I’d have tried.” Hob smiled. “I think I would have managed.”
The Old Stranger smiled at him then. “That is why you sought an audience? Nothing more?”
“Yes.” Hob paused. “Well—” The Old Stranger raised an eyebrow. “Now I know who you are—and where you are—could I maybe see you here again?”
“I have many responsibilities. My realm is a large one and its citizens are not the easiest to manage.”
“Yes,” Hob said. “Of course. Of course.”
“But I think I may make time for an old friend.”
Hob smiled. “Because you’re interested?”
The Old Stranger nodded. “Just so.”
“Only,” Hob paused. “It has not been easy to get here. I mean, I tried for quite a while and never remembered anything that had happened. Even tried some daft Salvador Dali trick Constantine told me about. If mortals come here every night, why have I never been here before?”
“It’s true you’ve been to the Dreaming before. It’s not in the nature of it to remain fixed in mortals’ memories. It’s what allows you to believe the waking world is all there is.” The Old Stranger gestured to his throne room. “I think you will find it easier to enter the heart of the Dreaming now.”
“Thank you.” Hob said, and began to feel a pull away from this place, dragging him back to waking. “One more thing—that fellow, Will Shaxberd. ‘What dreams may come,’ ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made of,’ ‘perchance to dream,’ ‘when I waked I cried to dream again,’ ‘we are all made of dreams,’ a Midsummer Night’s Dream—you vain bastard. ‘Nothing so crude,’ you said. No, not the poet’s soul—just a promise to flatter you in his plays.”
The Old Stranger laughed freely. “Surely I am allowed my own form of immortality?”
His smile filled Hob’s vision.
And then Hob woke.